She turned and walked out of the store into the blistering heat, clutching her empty bag to her chest, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
The journey back to the cabin took nearly two hours. Sarah walked with her head bowed, avoiding the sharp spines of cholla cactus and the loose scree along the wagon trail that wound out of Silver Creek toward the desolate northern hills.
The Mitchell homestead sat in a shallow depression between two dry ridges, surrounded by stunted mesquite trees and gray sagebrush. It was a humble place—two rooms constructed of hand-hewn cottonwood logs, chinked with dry mud and straw. Thomas had built it with his bare hands during the first year of their marriage, dreaming of the day when cattle would graze in the draws and water would flow from a deep well. Now, the unpainted timber was weathered to the color of bone, and the dry grass around the porch whispered mournfully in the rising evening wind.
Sarah climbed the two wooden steps to the porch, her ankles swollen and aching. Inside, the cabin was stifling, having trapped the day’s heat beneath its low tin roof. She dropped her satchel onto the rough cedar table and sank into the wooden rocking chair Thomas had carved for her.
She sat in the gathering gloom, her hand resting on her stomach, breathing in the smell of old soot and dry cedar.
As twilight deepened, the desert underwent its daily transformation. The blinding brass of the sky bled into deep bruised purples, violets, and finally an absolute, velvet indigo. The temperature plummeted with frontier swiftness, the baking heat replaced by a sharp mountain chill that crept through the gaps in the doorframe.
Sarah rose stiffly, struck a sulphur match, and lit the wick of the small coal-oil lamp on the table. The soft yellow flame illuminated the simple room: the iron skillet hanging by the cold hearth, the dry herbs tied with twine hanging from the rafters, and the small wooden shelf holding their few books—a King James Bible, a volume of agricultural tables, and an atlas with torn corners.
Beside the lamp lay Thomas's pocket watch.
Sarah picked it up. The silver casing was worn smooth at the edges from the decades it had spent in the pockets of Thomas’s working trousers and his father’s before him. On the back, a faint, almost entirely buffed-out engraving depicted an eagle perched upon an anchor. The hinge was loose, and the glass face had a hairline fracture running across the Roman numeral four.
She wound the watch carefully, listening to the steady, rhythmic tick-tick-tick of the brass escapement. It was the only sound of life in the quiet room.
"Your father was a stubborn man," she whispered into the dimness, resting the cold metal against her cheek. "He thought a man could build a world out of rocks and cedar logs just by working until his hands bled. And now look at us."
The baby gave a faint, reassuring flutter inside her womb, as if listening.
A sudden sound shattered the silence.
It was not the distant bark of a coyote or the dry rattle of wind through the brush. It was the distinct, thundering drumbeat of iron shoes striking stone.
Horses. Moving at a gallop.
Sarah froze, the watch still pressed to her face. Her breath caught in her throat. Ranchers in this territory did not ride hard through the dark unless they were fleeing an Apache raiding party or hunting stock. And this was not the sound of one horse; it was several, their hooves striking the dry caliche of the trail that led straight to her front gate.
Instinct, sharpened by months of frontier isolation, took hold. Sarah reached out and blew sharply into the chimney of the oil lamp.
The flame died. Darkness rushed in.
She moved quickly to the small glass window on the south wall, pulling the frayed calico curtain back an inch.
The moon had risen full and luminous over the eastern ridge, casting long, ink-black shadows across the clearing. Five riders were pulling their mounts to a sliding halt just outside her low rail fence. Dust billowed around the horses’ flanks like silver smoke.
They were not soldiers. They were not Indians. They were white men, heavily armed, clad in trail-stained duster coats, slouch hats, and high leather leggings.
Sarah recognized the man on the lead horse instantly.
It was Dutch Carpenter.
Carpenter was a border outlaw whose name was whispered in saloons and printed on yellowing handbills tacked to the wall of the marshal’s office. He had run cattle across the Mexican border, robbed the stage at Black Canyon, and killed two miners outside Prescott over a dispute concerning a poker hand. He was a broad, squat man with a graying beard and a scar that ran from his left eye down into the corner of his mouth, pulling his lips into a perpetual, grotesque snarl.